As that great ad man Don Draper once said, “if you don’t like what's being said, change the conversation.” Tweaked for public relations, “if you don’t have anything newsworthy – make it.” Now, we’re not suggesting you pull a Peggy Olson and pay people to fight over your product in store to generate publicity, but public relations is often less about waiting for something newsworthy to happen with your company and more about creating something newsworthy to gain media attention.

A few (non-shady) ways to generate good PR:

Hold a Contest

Find something related to your brand and ask your followers to make a video/paint a picture/write a song about it and then pick a winner! You’ll get the media mentions promoting the contest as well as the follow-up once you award your winner. Pro-tip, the more deserving your pool of contestants - i.e., teachers, nurses, volunteers - the more media coverage you’ll attract. Recently, we held a contest for our client Yowie to award a local teacher $1000 for their classroom and Yowie chocolate for the whole school! We secured two interviews for the Yowie CMO leading up to the contest and coverage of the award presentation!

Give a Gift

Social media is a great way to advertise your business and with 1.86 billion active users a month on Facebook alone, it’s no longer optional, but essential. However, if you’ve fallen into the rut of simply pushing out posts about your products or services, you’re doing social media wrong.

The beauty of social media is that it allows you to interact and engage with your audience while showing off your brand’s personality. Posts show up in the same place where people get daily updates from friends and family. Keeping your social media content conversational will help customers see you as personable and engender deeper brand loyalty. Keeping a consistent voice for your brand is important. Here are a few ways to inject your feed with a little joy while still staying on message!

Get “Real” in Stories: Most of the time, companies fall into a routine with their social media marketing because they find it overwhelming. From new platforms to new features, it can feel impossible to keep up with current trends. But you don’t need to become a TikTok star to have some fun. Leverage stories (on Instagram and/or Facebook) to show quick, behind-the-scenes looks at your company culture. Have a fun snack at your staff meeting? Throw it into your story. Get a shipment of a cool new product? Film an unboxing. The best part is that stories are only visible for 24 hours, so it removes the pressure of the post needing to “look right” or fit in with your overall feed. Once you loosen your expectations, you open yourself up to creativity!Make a Day of It: It may seem annoying that every little thing gets its own day, but for social media content creation, it’s a godsend. Looking up a list of national days at the beginning of each month is a super simple way to plan out some easy, light content. Find a day that fits in with your brand and the post practically writes itself. Check out this post KMK created for Butitta Brothers in honor of Rocky Road Day for proof of how easy content creation can be.Flex Your Funny Bone: It may or may not be true that the internet was created for the sole purpose of sharing funny memes. And even if that’s not true, it’s still a popular activity. Get in on the action with some memes that relate to your industry. You can search for pre-made memes (just be sure to credit the creator) or you can create your own. Creating a meme is as easy as finding a popular celebrity photo and adding your own text. Check out the Girlboss feed for a masterclass.Put a Ring on It (AKA Engage): Social media is the best chance to speak directly to your customers. So treat it like an actual conversation and respond! If someone takes the time to comment on your post, reply. Not only will more comments boost your post’s visibility, but the more you act like a human being, the more your customers will think of you like one and treat you accordingly. And you don’t need to wait for someone else to make the first move. Go ahead and follow your followers, engage with their content and see if they return the favor (they probably will). Doing so results in wins all around and the forging of a loyal bond. And people buy from people and companies they like and can relate to.

The bottom line is, although most companies view social media as a vital marketing tool (which it is), don’t forget it started as a means to socialize. Do you want to be the boring person at the party who can only talk about work? Of course not. So, have some fun! 

(Rockford, IL) … KMK Media Group, Inc worked with the Winnebago County Heath Department to create a trio of videos aimed at educating parents on the importance of oral health for pregnant mothers, babies and toddlers. The videos will be beneficial to community parents for years to come and will be promoted on social media and other digital media outlets.

The Winnebago County Health Department provides services designed to protect, promote and maintain the health of Winnebago County residents.

In business for more than two decades, KMK Media Group is an award-winning woman-owned marketing firm specializing in website development, graphic design, public relations, advertising campaigns, and social media marketing.

Podcasting ­­­­— what was once a niche market has exploded into popular culture in a huge way. In 2022 you likely know at least one person who hosts a podcast. If not, hello! My name is Devin and I host a podcast. And now my point is made.

The same reasons everyone from your neighbor to your mechanic can host a podcast apply to businesses as well – its easy, relatively inexpensive and fun! In fact, when it comes to businesses, podcasts are one of the easiest and most effective marketing tools. From a Forbes article on the benefits of podcasting –

“You can’t demonstrate your credibility without sharing your expertise, and by sharing your expertise you become helpful. You become valuable for your listeners,” explains Stephen Woessner on his podcast Onward Nation, a daily podcast for business owners. “It’s much more likely you can then develop a business relationship from someone in your audience when you’ve established your credibility.”

But where do you start? We have compiled a checklist of everything you need before you jump into the podcasting world. The below is merely a jumping-off point, there are countless options and services when it comes to podcasting, but these are my recommendations for starting out.

Decisions to Make:

Apparently, there was some sort of sports game on the other night…? I wouldn’t know. I was only there for the food, the halftime show and, of course, the commercials. Truly, unless you’re someone who genuinely “likes” football or lives in one of the represented cities, the only thing to look forward to on Super Bowl Sunday are the ads. This year, advertisers chose to largely ignore the upheaval in the NFL and the world at large and focus on funny, star-studded entertainment. Not all the swings were hits, but many were. Here are the top 10 (at least in the opinion of this humble marketing professional).

 

Rocket Mortgage, “Barbie’s Dream House”

Sometimes you need to laugh to keep from crying. Yes, the housing market is so competitive that even Barbie would struggle to buy her dream house, but through the undeniable charm of Anna Kendrick that ugly truth comes across as fun rather than soul-crushing. Plus, the idea of Barbie living next door to Skeletor? Priceless.

 

Inclusive Marketing may sound like the latest industry buzzword, but it’s actually the natural progression of what marketers have known for decades: if you’re trying to reach a particular group you need to appeal to who they are and what they like. Seems simple enough, yet time and again we have seen brands fumble in their delivery. Here are three tips for avoiding the common pitfalls of inclusive marketing.

1. Do Your Homework

The only thing worse than not being inclusive in your marketing is being inclusive in name only, without putting any actual effort into understanding and appealing to your target audience. If you or your team doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of your target customer group your priority should be market research. (It also might be time to look at why no one on your team can speak to certain demographic groups and consider making changes at a company-wide level).

Get to know your customers - what they want and how they want to be represented – before you start marketing to them. Thinking you understand a group without doing the actual work could land you in a PR crisis or worse. Remember when Pepsi tried to capitalize on the Black Lives Matter movement with… Kendall Jenner. Yeah, that did not go well.  Don’t be like Pepsi. Be better.

2. Create Realistic Content

The “cerulean blue monologue” from The Devil Wears Prada will forever live rent-free in my mind. You know, the one where Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly succinctly reads Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs character for scoffing at the “triviality” of fashion while highlighting the countless designers, editors and visionaries it takes for a simple blue sweater to end up in our closet? Excuse me, cerulean. It’s a cinematic masterpiece and the first thing that pops into my head every time Pantone reveals its color of the year.

The process of picking the color of the year sounds very similar to the series of events Miranda Priestly describes; the color experts at Pantone scour runways, artwork and films for a color that will speak to the general mood of the world for the coming year. Then, in the endless circle of influence, the color is picked up by even more designers and tastemakers and even corporate brands to truly become the omnipresent color of the year.

This year, Pantone chose Very-Perri – a vibrant shade of periwinkle – to define 2022. As Pantone explained to Adweek, they started with a blue base  – a perennial favorite – and then added a “red-violet undertone.” “So, you’ve taken your blue, that steadfast color, and added this excitement, this dynamism,” Pantone executive director Leatrice Eiseman explained.

So where will we be seeing Very-Perri in the coming year? Likely, everywhere. From the fashion industry, who pays particular attention to Pantone’s annual choices, to Microsoft, a long-time partner of Pantone, who will incorporate the hue into their products such as PowerPoint and Windows wallpaper.

The great thing about having a universally rallying color is that brands big or small can take advantage of the intel. We might not all have access to the exact shade of Very-Perri – a brand new and exclusive Pantone shade – but we can all feature vivid periwinkle in our ads and products for the year and benefit from the burst of optimism it’s meant to impart.